Wrong, because (many) trans men and non-binary folk also have uteruses and menstruate and even get pregnant and breast feed.
If they wrote ‘pregnant women and trans men’, then it would not be erasure. (Though it would be annoyingly clunky.) But I do want it recognised that it’s not cis men who are undergoing the burden and risks of pregnancy in order to keep the human race alive.
Then call them “people who menstruate” or “people with a uterus” or “people with XX chromosomes” or whatever the specific category you want to talk about. English is very flexible.
Did you see where I wrote ‘so we’re forced to resort to obnoxious paraphrases that reduce people to their body parts’? That is what Rowling is complaining about.
It also shows that Orwell was wrong. If you redefine the word for something, it does not remove the concept from people’s brains. They will just find another way to talk about it.
But “women” was never fully comprehensive for those various categories in the first place. There were always exceptions. If you want to create a new word that’s perfect for what you’re talking about, feel free to try. But it was never “women”, not even long before the word transgender existed.
How would you rephrase a sentence like “Women are at high risk of developing UTIs” without referencing “women” or “female”?
People with vaginas/vulvas isn’t precise enough, because those structures do not explain why women are at high risk of developing UTIs.
Take a sentence like “Men have a higher risk of having a heart attack than women”. Are you really saying that “People with penises have a higher risk of having a heart attack than people with vaginas” is the most precise way to express this? Is it the penises and vaginas that are responsible for the discrepancy, or it is it an entire constellation of biological and social factors?
I don’t like “menstruators”, but if the conversation is only about menstruation, it fits. But if I want to talk about health disparities that are associated with the social construct of a gender class, I want to be able to use the word that encapsulates that. “People with uteruses” doesn’t do that. That only works if the conversation is about uteri.
If it was never fully comprehensive, never an exact description, then why do we need to change it now? We never had a problem advertising sanitary products to women before, even though many women no longer menstruate and some never did.
I’m happy to go on using ‘women’, even though there are always exceptions, so why is it my responsibility to invent a new word?
@iiandyiiii
Even if you are happy being called a ‘person with a penis’ or an ‘ejaculator’, or buying deodorant advertised to ‘sweaters’ (not everyone has apocrine sweat glands), can you at least understand why other people may object?
I’m a man, and presumably you’re a woman. I’m fine with those words. I’m also a cis man, and I presume you’re a cis woman. These words are fine too. It’s also fine to talk about people with a uterus, or a penis, or who menstruate, or who have XX chromosomes, or whatever. All these things are fine to refer to. Sometimes they’ll be comprehensive, sometimes they won’t.
Vitamin D deficiency in older men
In this study, a randomly selected subcohort of a large population of men from six U.S. communities participated in the study.
Should transmen be included in this group?
Should the researchers have used the term “cismen” to describe the subjects they studied?
Doesn’t “cismen” exclude transwomen? What would be the basis for excluding these folks, when thestudy is focused on biology rather than gender identity?
I think having some answers to these questions would be helpful to the discussion.
I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t object to a number of different ways to refer to such folks. Maybe there’s no way to do it without offending someone. JKR got annoyed at “people who menstruate”, even though that was the specific exact best way to refer to the people in question, and she’s being criticized for an insulting and inaccurate quip she made.
That’s nice. Some people find the use of ‘women’ in these contexts insulting/offensive. Some people find the use of ‘menstruators’ insulting/offensive. Why do you consider the feelings of the first group valid, but not the second?
@iiandyiiii, I’d really like to see your answer to this question.
@monstro on misunderstandings and claims of “gaslighting”:
I’m certain I never intended to say this as a response to the specific question of academic research. And I’ve cited one example of me making my position clear to you upthread. But it’s virtually impossible to search such a long thread, and it’s not constructive to accuse you of strawmanning when perhaps I expressed myself poorly somewhere else. But I’d be grateful if rather than putting words into my mouth so explicitly with this kind of “paraphrase”, you could actually quote me in future, so that we can trace the misunderstanding if there was one and clarify.
Nobody is gaslighting anyone. But you are engaging in a deeper conversation about terminology while still sometimes referring to “sex” and “gender” unqualified as though this is clear terminology. As I’ve already said, I think it would reduce misunderstandings if we avoid referring vaguely to “sex” and “gender” unqualified. The standard terminology that makes clear what aspect of these things you are referring to is:
biological sex (not a term I love, but it seems to be widespread)
sex assigned at birth (i.e. biological sex assigned at birth, historically assumed to be congruent with gender identity)
gender identity (mental state)
gender expression (behavior)
I don’t think using this standard technology involves any concession to the significance or character any of these things.
Any such feelings can be valid, depending on the circumstances. But I didn’t object to JKR’s feelings - I objected to her inaccurate and insulting language.
Which inaccurate and insulting language?
This probably would apply to some folks without penises, so that wouldn’t really be exact either. What’s the determining factor, or the correlating factor? Testosterone? Testicles? XY chromosome? Whatever that is would be the best descriptor, IMO.
And I get why she was annoyed. The article was about the challenges women face globally with menstruation. But instead of using the social construct label that describes that group (and has always described that group), we get called “menstruators”.
I’m not fixing to protest in the streets over the word, but her complaint isn’t that unreasonable to me. People like JK feel like menstruators does an “all lives matter” on women’s oppression. Women aren’t restricted to the menstrual hut just because menstruate. They are sent there because they belong to a class of people who have little power in most places in the world. Reducing it to menstruation misses the point by a mile.
It’s kind of like how people make racial discrimination out to be a matter of skin color. That might useful shorthand sometimes, but it glosses over the fact that you can have light skin and still be seen as inferior. So “people of color” is a sociopolitical term–one that shouldn’t be taken literally. “Menstruators” in the context that JK was objecting to suggests the problem is one of menstruation rather the problem of misogyny and lack of female empowerment.
The tweet I quoted above (plus some other stuff, like “contagion” to describe transgender). Didn’t we already discuss this pretty specifically?
But it was about the distribution of supplies for menstruation. It wasn’t about something general for women - it was specifically about tampons and stuff like that. Why is it inappropriate to refer to people who menstruate when the topic, very specifically, is about supplies for menstruation? The article specifically referred to women, girls, and others who menstruate, because this larger category faces shared challenges due to oppression with regards to supplies for menstruation.